"The participants in the Complementary Programme are both dedicated and purposeful"

Our participants are highly educated and skilled pharmacists who want to contribute their knowledge to society. The Swedish pharmacy chains are in turn in great need of their skills. But in order to employ pharmacists with a foreign education, they must first acquire a Swedish pharmacist's license, and at the Complementary Programme they get all the knowledge required.

What is the focus of the curriculum?
We start the programme with a language semester where our participants train their skills to communicate in Swedish with colleagues, healthcare staff and patients, but also to read academic literature. This is followed by an up-to-date overview of the pharmaceutical sciences before we turn to communication and the role of drugs in Swedish society and their importance to public health. During the third and final semester, the participants do internships at a pharmacy.

Who enrolls at the programme?
In addition to having completed a foreign Master of Science Programme in pharmacy, all our participants are both dedicated and purposeful. Since launching the Complementary Programme in 2017, we have consistently welcomed amazing student groups with great throughput and basically everyone receiving job offers even before graduation.

How do you set up the teaching?
As most of the participants have reached further in their life puzzles than our Swedish students, we carry out most parts of the education online with only a few moments on campus. We also provide e-course literature and internships all over Sweden. But although the participants rarely meet in person, they form a very inspiring environment, sharing their various experiences, which in turn gives depth to the discussions which are often very rewarding for us teachers as well.

What is the most important thing they bring with them from the programme?
If we read the evaluations, many participants emphasize that the courses provide valuable preparation for practicing the profession in Sweden, and that pretty much sums it up. They are all qualified pharmaceutical experts and several have worked as pharmacists in their home countries, but here they get to implement and update their knowledge in a Swedish context with the traditions and regulations that apply in our country.

What do employers have to say about the programme?
We have continuous meetings with representatives of the Swedish pharmacy chains, and they all are very positive about the Complementary Programme as an effective route to a Swedish pharmacist license and profession. That UKÄ states in a report that eight out of ten participants three years after completing the Programme have established themselves on the Swedish labor market also qualifies as proof that we are on the right track.

text: Magnus Alsne, photo: Mikael Wallerstedt a o